TY - JOUR
T1 - Citizen Science Water Projects in Nepal
T2 - Participant Motivations And the Impacts of Involvement
AU - Walker, David W.
AU - Tani, Masakazu
AU - Gyawali, Narayan
AU - Chapagain, Prem Sagar
AU - Davids, Jeffrey C.
AU - Ghimire, Alisha
AU - Maharjan, Makhan
AU - Parajuli, Binod Prasad
AU - Prajapati, Rajaram
AU - Regmi, Santosh
AU - Shah, Rakesh Kumar
AU - Shakya, Puja
AU - Upadhyay, Surabhi
N1 - Funding Information:
This research was funded by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS), Fellowship ID: 19018. The authors would like to thank the citizen scientists and project organisers who participated in the research. We would like to acknowledge field staff who assisted in conducting interviews: Bharat Acharya, Umesh Sejwal, Herina Joshi, Ranju Shrestha, and Gyan Prakash Yadav. We are grateful to Smartphones For Water Nepal (S4W-Nepal), Urban Environment Management Society (UEMS), Lutheran World Relief (LWR) and SAHAMATI for contributing staff time in support of the project. We are grateful to three anonymous reviewers and the editors for their constructive comments and suggestions that led to improvement of this manuscript.
Funding Information:
This research was funded by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS), Fellowship ID: 19018. The authors would like to thank the citizen scientists and project organisers who participated in the research. We would like to acknowledge field staff who assisted in conducting interviews: Bharat Acharya, Umesh Sejwal, Herina Joshi, Ranju Shrestha, and Gyan Prakash Yadav. We are grateful to Smartphones For Water Nepal (S4W-Nepal), Urban Environment Management Society (UEMS), Lutheran World Relief (LWR) and SAHAMATI for contributing staff time in support of the project. We are grateful to three anonymous reviewers and the editors for their constructive comments and suggestions that led to improvement of this manuscript
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021. This Article Is Distributed Under The Terms Of The Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Sharealike License Which Permits Any Non Commercial Use, Distribution, And Reproduction In Any Medium, Provided The Original Author(S) And Source Are Credited. See Https://Creativecommons.Org/Licenses/By-Nc-Sa/3.0/Fr/Deed.En
PY - 2021/10
Y1 - 2021/10
N2 - Citizen science is blossoming in the water sciences and benefits to the scientific community are well reported. The experiences of involved citizens are less well researched, however, particularly in the Global South. To address this knowledge gap, we investigated the participant motivations of citizen science water projects in Nepal and the benefits and negative impacts of involvement. Semi-structured interviews and questionnaires were utilised with 74 participants and 15 project organisers, mainly from 5 projects. Participant responses yielded evidence of most of the commonly reported potential benefits of involvement in citizen science, including knowledge gain, increased scientific literacy, and empowerment. Not all benefits were experienced by all participants, however, and there was evidence – albeit minimal – of negative impacts, with some participants reporting the net effect of involvement as being burdensome or disappointing. Participant motivations matched those typically observed among Global North citizen scientists; most commonly, contributing to scientific research, having the opportunity to learn, and helping the community. While this study indicated that involvement in the investigated projects was mostly beneficial, further Global South citizen scientist assessments are needed to enable benefits to be maximised, negative impacts to be avoided, and motivations to be understood for improved participant targeting and retention
AB - Citizen science is blossoming in the water sciences and benefits to the scientific community are well reported. The experiences of involved citizens are less well researched, however, particularly in the Global South. To address this knowledge gap, we investigated the participant motivations of citizen science water projects in Nepal and the benefits and negative impacts of involvement. Semi-structured interviews and questionnaires were utilised with 74 participants and 15 project organisers, mainly from 5 projects. Participant responses yielded evidence of most of the commonly reported potential benefits of involvement in citizen science, including knowledge gain, increased scientific literacy, and empowerment. Not all benefits were experienced by all participants, however, and there was evidence – albeit minimal – of negative impacts, with some participants reporting the net effect of involvement as being burdensome or disappointing. Participant motivations matched those typically observed among Global North citizen scientists; most commonly, contributing to scientific research, having the opportunity to learn, and helping the community. While this study indicated that involvement in the investigated projects was mostly beneficial, further Global South citizen scientist assessments are needed to enable benefits to be maximised, negative impacts to be avoided, and motivations to be understood for improved participant targeting and retention
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M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85122991497
SN - 1965-0175
VL - 14
SP - 664
EP - 689
JO - Water Alternatives
JF - Water Alternatives
IS - 3
ER -